Facebook Privacy Changes: Time To Vote

I got a few emails from Facebook yesterday. Not too surprising, most were automatic notices about close friends.

But one was surprising. It was from Facebook, the company, and it was asking me to vote on its proposed, new “Site Governance” policies (privacy and data sharing policies).

If you’re a Facebook user, you may have received one too.

Did you ignore it?

If you use Facebook and care about how it handles your personal information, you should make the effort to vote and have your voice heard.

Ironically, one of the proposals being voted on is to abolish the Facebook voting system for policy changes itself. Another is to allow Facebook to share more user data with Instagram (which Facebook purchased) and other “affiliates.” Other proposed changes cover who can see what on your Timeline, filters for incoming messages, and advertising policies.

The returns so far show the vast majority of voters rejecting the new proposals, but Facebook will only consider the vote binding if at least 30% of its 1 billion or more users vote by December 10. As of this post, only about 425,000 users have voted so far (365,000 against the changes).